[Editorial] Star Wars Director Blunders: What's Going On, Kathleen Kennedy?

(Source - starwarstsc.com)

Kathleen Kennedy came on to Star Wars because George Lucas wanted her to take over in the producer role. She came highly recommended by Steven Spielberg, and Lucas put her in the deal when selling Star Wars rights to Disney.

And so far, the movies that Kennedy produced, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are in the all-time US domestic chart, while Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is also a billion dollar movie.

Solo: A Star Wars Story received mixed audience reviews, considered a box office failure, but I loved that movie to bits.

The director problems:

However, when it comes to attaching directors, Kennedy has had a string of misfires. First was the Josh Trank situation, who was let go for the Fantastic Four fiasco.

Then there was Colin Trevorrow, who was supposed to do Episode IX but was suddenly let go while The Last Jedi was filming.

Rogue One is a beloved movie, but it had its share of problems. There were reports that Tony Gilroy came in after director Gareth Edwards finished shooting the whole movie in order to fix a lot of scenes that Kennedy wasn't satisfied with. But Edwards played ball and worked with Gilroy without kicking up a fuss.

Then there was the infamous firing of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who had completed an alleged 70% of Solo but were reportedly going off Lawrence Kasdan's script too much.

And just a couple of days ago, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have parted ways with Lucasfilm, citing that they were "too busy" with their new Netflix deal.

Four movies Kennedy had produced, and she has let go of five sets of directors. This does not bode well for her!

I am a fan of Kennedy:

Let me just say that first.

She convinced J.J. Abrams to do The Force Awakens, which I adored. She brought the original trio back - convincing Harrison Ford, who has for decades distanced himself from the character while alienating fans at the same time, to have one last go as Han Solo.

She assembled a great team in the new trio of Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac. The Force Awakens started the new waves of movies very well. And she brought old fans back while bringing in a new generation. That first movie was a huge success.

Then came all the issues. Many would give her a pass for the Josh Trank situation. But what happened with Trevorrow? And how did Lord and Miller went off the rails so much so that they had to be fired?

Kennedy's role in producing these movies is to make sure that she is hiring the right directors. That means having a lot of meetings with potential directors by sharing what her vision was for a particular movie and making sure that these directors are onboard and will bring that vision to life (Lord and Miller, Benioff and Weiss). This also includes checking around the industry on the recent projects that they were working on (Trank, and perhaps Trevorrow).

All these "homework" should have been done first before announcing to the whole world which directors are boarding what movies.

And she seemed to be not doing a great job on this.

More inconsistencies:

Let me briefly touch on The Last Jedi, which I have a separate theory on my next post. While on the outside, it seemed that Kennedy and director Rian Johnson have had a great working partnership; the movie itself was the most divisive in terms of fans acceptance of its story.

Many reports also have come out saying that Johnson has read the outline that Abrams have written for the second movie, and threw that out just like his opening scene in The Last Jedi where Luke threw away his lightsaber.

But isn't this Kennedy's role as well, to make sure that the overall story is intact going from one movie to the next, going from one director to the next. If the directors are changing in a trilogy, she is the connective tissue between each movie and it is her role to oversee that all three movies are going as planned.

If that was so, why all these reports have surfaced? Why was Mark Hamill seen in many interviews voicing out his displeasure with his character? Didn't Hamill already know even in The Force Awakens what would be Luke Skywalker's fate?

The canon problem:

Not forgetting that it was announced by Kennedy very early on, before The Force Awakens was released, that there will be a lot of books, comics and games that were coming our way and those would all be canon. Fans rejoiced on that day.

But not even Mark Hamill knew about this, because he himself has said in an interview that he didn't know what his character had been through after Return Of The Jedi - but there were a few books on it already.

Laura Dern's character in The Last Jedi had no shadow of what her character felt like in the book that came out before the movie. And in another comic, Poe and Rey met already; but at the end of The Last Jedi, they "met" again.

Here's my conclusion:

Inside Disney, there are two powerhouse producers. One is Kennedy. The other is Kevin Feige. Kevin Feige has had 20 movies already under his belt. And he has only parted ways with one director, Edgar Wright. And that was because the movie Ant-Man evolved over the course of five years which Wright was attached.

As experienced as Kennedy is, producing individual movies is very different from producing movies that shares a connective thread in its storyline. A movie that is standalone is very isolated. Star Wars is not.

Am I, then, saying Kennedy is not suitable for this role? Not exactly. But I've been saying for a few years now that she needs someone like a Kevin Feige on her team to oversee the details of the Star Wars mythology and lore. And she has that person! His name is Dave Filoni (the director of the upcoming first episode of The Mandalorian). Filoni lives and breathes Star Wars, why isn't Kennedy using him in this capacity?

But now that it is announced that Feige will produce one Star Wars movie, hopefully this will shake things up a bit within Lucasfilm because Feige is well respected and arguably the most successful producer we have today in Hollywood.